By Heather Harvey
Journal and Courier - 3/23/99

Lafayette resident Dan Towery did not get a visit from a police officer or a shocking phone call notifying him that his daughter had been killed, along with two other people, in a traffic accident on County Road 350 South Sunday afternoon. Towery and his wife, Margie, were there.

Through their car's mirrors, the Towerys witnessed the violent crash that killed their daughter. "The first thing I thought was, 'I pray it's not them'" and Margie said, "It's the kids,'" Dan Towery said.

Sarah Towery, a 24-year-old student at the University of Illinois, was a passenger in a car driven by her boyfriend, 23-year-old Earl "Chip" Smith III, of Riverton, Ill., who also was killed.

The driver of the other vehicle, Jeffrey A. Pedone Trout, 39, of 3607 Thornhill Circle East in Lafayette, was killed when his late-model Chevrolet pickup truck crossed the center line and crashed head-on into Smith's car, according to Lafayette police.

Trout was not wearing a seat belt and was partially ejected from his vehicle. Towery and Smith were wearing seat belts and the Toyota Camry's airbags were deployed, but massive damage to the front of the car pinned the couple inside. All three victims died of multiple traumatic injuries, according to Tippecanoe County Coroner Martin Avolt.

Blood alcohol tests were performed on both drivers, which is standard procedure in fatal crashes. Results from those tests will not be available until next week.

Towery and Smith were traveling behind her parents in the westbound lane of 350 South on the way to Attica Sunday afternoon. The family planned to go hiking before the younger couple returned to their homes in Illinois.

Lafayette police say Trout was eastbound on 350 South when he crossed the center line and grazed a car driven by Pat Harrington of West Lafayette. After making contact with Harrington's car, Trout overcorrected and veered out around the car driven by Dan Towery before careening back into the oncoming lane and crashing head-on into Smith's car.

Towery said Trout's pickup went up on two wheels before it made impact with the Camry. The pickup became airborne and pushed the Camry 30 feet off the road before rolling onto its passenger side and coming to rest on the shoulder.

"That is an experience to see your daughter be in an impact like that and not be able to do anything about it," Towery said.

The crash will have a profound effect on another Lafayette family, as well. Trout had a fiancée in Lafayette and a son in Arizona. His father and stepmother, Donald and Pauline Trout, live in Lafayette. Jeff Trout was a self-employed contractor and had lived in Lafayette since 1993.

Towery and other witnesses said Trout appeared to be leaning to the right and was not looking at the road when he initially crossed the center line. "He definitely had one hand holding the steering wheel. It looked to me like he was holding a cell phone," Towery said.

Lafayette police could not verify if Trout was using a cell phone at the time of the accident.

The pickup was on fire when Towery and his wife ran back to the crash scene and Towery ran to the Camry to check on his daughter. "I tried to get Sarah and Chip out but I couldn't, with bare hands, obviously," he said.

Towery saw two men pulling Trout from the overturned, burning pickup, then set him down when someone warned that the truck was going to explode. Towery and another man grabbed Trout and pulled him clear of the fire.

A valiant effort

The first squad of firefighters on the scene worked to extinguished the blaze in the pickup as EMTs worked with the victims in the car. Towery watched as several EMTs tried to save his daughter's boyfriend.

"We were there with the EMTs and there were three or four of them saying, 'no pulse, no pulse.'  We had just a glimmer of hope for Sarah because the impact was on the driver's side," he said.

A second group of firefighters arrived and used the Jaws of Life, a pneumatic device used to pry apart crashed vehicles, to remove Sarah Towery from the car. "They got Sarah out. She was dead then, I think. I rode with her in the ambulance," Towery said.

Towery said a valiant effort was made to keep his daughter alive all the way to the hospital and after arriving.

"Almost as soon as we got to the hospital, Richard Doyle came," Towery said. Doyle's son Jeremy, a star athlete and popular student at McCutcheon High School, was killed in December in an accident on 350 South less than a mile from Sunday's accident.

Doyle and his wife, Sandy, had never met the Towerys but they came to the hospital and stayed until the couple's family arrived from Illinois, Towery said.

When it became clear that their daughter was not going to live, the Towerys agreed to donate her organs.

"They were trying to keep her alive quite a while so they could do the organ harvest," Towery said, but the medication she had received made all but her heart valves and corneas unusable.

Daughter remembered

Towery and his youngest daughter Lisa, a 21-year-old Purdue University student, said Sarah was a fun-loving, hard-working person who had not yet graduated from college because she was occasionally distracted by a passion for the material things in life.

She bought her first home in November and recently traveled to England with a friend. "She was very determined to finish school even though it took her longer than normal," he said.

Towery smiled as he remembered one of his daughter's strongest traits. "She was very good at giving orders," he said.

Sarah worked full-time as an office manager at P.S.I., an engineering firm, in Springfield, Ill., where she met Smith. The couple had been dating for about seven months. "They were a perfect couple," Towery said.

A joint visitation service for the couple is planned for Wednesday in Springfield with a memorial service on Thursday morning.

Towery was appreciative of the efforts of the emergency workers who tried to save his daughter's life. "I would like to thank the EMTs and the fire department for their good work. They tried."

ACCIDENT SCENE: Three people were killed in this accident Sunday afternoon on 350 S. in Lafayette just west of Concord Road. By Amy Bombassaro/Journal and Courier